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Look, up in the sky! It's a bird, it's a plane, it's... the Beta
release of Beefy Miracle! Flying 'round the world at the speed of the
intertubes, delivering progress, mustard, and freedom to the masses.
We are delighted to announce the availability of the Beta release of
Fedora 17. Want to get a taste of the future? Download it now:
http://fedoraproject.org/get-prerelease
== What is the Beta Release? ==
The Beta release is the last important milestone of Fedora 17. Only
critical bug fixes will be pushed as updates leading to the general
release of Fedora 17 in May. We invite you to join us in making Fedora
17 a solid release by downloading, testing, and providing your valuable
feedback.
Of course, this is a beta release, meaning that some problems may still
be lurking. A list of the problems we already know about is found at
the Common F17 bugs page, seen here:
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Common_F17_bugs
== Features ==
This release of Fedora includes a variety of features both over and
under the hood that show off the power and flexibility of the advancing
state of free software. Here are just a few of the new features:
On the desktop: GNOME 3.4 introduces many user experience improvements,
including new search capabilities in the activities overview, improved
themes, and enhancements to the Documents and Contacts applications. A
new application, GNOME-boxes, provides easy access to virtual
machines. Additionally, GIMP 2.8, the newest version of the GNU Image
Manipulation Program, brings new improvements such as single-window
mode, layer groups, and on-canvas editing.
For developers: You never sausage a great array of development tools!
Fedora 17 includes a pre-release of Juno, the release of the Eclipse
SDK expected in June 2012. Java 7 (and OpenJDK 7) is the default Java
runtime and Java build toolset, and GCC 4.7.x is now the primary
compiler in Fedora. Other language refreshes include shipping Ruby
1.9.3, the latest stable version of the Ruby language, PHP 5.4, the
latest PHP stack, and Erlang has also been updated to the R15 release.
Under the hood, and in the cloud: The Cluster stack in Fedora includes
numerous and significant updates for both high availability and
load-balancing applications. Fedora 17 utilizes Linux kernel 3.3, with
improved btrfs and ext4 filesystems, GMA (poulsbo) graphics and
Broadcom wireless chipset support, and numerous other bug fixes and
enhancements. Firewalld is now the default firewall solution in Fedora,
providing dynamic firewall configuration capabilities. Finally,
OpenStack, a collection of services that can be used to set up and run
cloud compute and storage infrastructure, has been updated to the
latest release, 2012.1 (Essex).
And that's only the beginning. A more complete list and details of all
the new features in Fedora 17 is available here:
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Releases/17/FeatureList
We have nightly composes of alternate spins available here:
http://dl.fedoraproject.org/pub/alt/nightly-composes/
== Contributing to Fedora ==
For more information on common and known bugs, tips on how to report
bugs, and the official release schedule, please refer to the release
notes:
http://docs.fedoraproject.org
There are many ways to contribute beyond bug reporting. You can help
translate software and content, test and give feedback on software
updates, write and edit documentation, help with all sorts of
promotional activities, and package free software for use by millions
of Fedora users worldwide. To get started, visit
http://join.fedoraproject.org today!
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